MNsure sent notices this week to about 2,300 health insurance enrollees that included wrong information about their health plan selections for 2017.
The notices should have listed consumers' health plan choice for next year, state officials said, but instead listed this year's selections due to a problem with computer coding.
A reader contacted the Star Tribune earlier this week about the problem, and state officials said late Wednesday that corrected notices would be mailed in the coming days.
"This error in the notice does not impact enrollment for consumers," MNsure said in a statement that was jointly issued with the state's MN.IT department for information technology services.
"We want to reassure consumers who have received this notice that their 2017 plan selection is correct in our system, and the correct information also has been reported to Minnesota health insurance companies."
Since open enrollment started Nov. 1, MNsure shoppers have been focused on making sure they promptly sign up with the health plan of their choice, since most options could sell out due to enrollment caps. The caps are an emergency measure that apply only to the troubled individual market.
MNsure is an option for the roughly 250,000 state residents who buy individual health insurance policies, meaning they don't get coverage from their employer or through a government program like Medicare.
The incorrect notices sent this week impact less than 10 percent of the more than 28,000 MNsure users who have signed up for commercial health insurance since Nov. 1, when the current open enrollment period started. The incorrect notices weren't mailed to people in the state's Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare programs, where enrollees also use the MNsure website.
"The incorrect notices occurred as a result of a coding problem that incorrectly pulled 2016 data to generate the notice," state officials said in a statement. "The code has now been corrected and affected enrollees will receive corrected notices in the mail."
Minnesota created the MNsure health insurance exchange to implement the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires almost all Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. People use MNsure to enroll in private health plans, as well as the state's public health insurance programs.
Christopher Snowbeck • 612-673-4744
Twitter: @chrissnowbeck
